Dear WAI IG,
I would like your input on a comment about the draft W3C Web site and
would like your input on how to make a particular feature more
accessible.
The draft site includes an expand/collapse content feature. For
example, on the page that lists W3C groups:
http://beta.w3.org/Consortium/activities
when you select a heading under "Working Groups" the heading 'expands'
to display content after it. When content is displayed, selecting the
heading 'collapses' it, hiding the content. Expanding and collapsing
both work with mouse click or keyboard activation.
We use a visual cue (a small image) to signal that there is expandable
content. It was pointed out that we need a non-visual indicator as
well. In the current design, the image is included via CSS and so we
cannot add alt text.
Here's how the site works today:
* If javascript is turned off or not supported, the content is
expanded and the issue goes away.
* When javascript is enabled, there is one image to indicate
"closed" and another to indicate "open." The images are inserted via
CSS. The javascript is used to position a class attribute value in the
content, and the CSS is applied accordingly (displaying or hiding
content according to the current state).
One suggestion was to use WAI-ARIA's aria-expanded. However, this will
provide information only to users whose browser and assistive
technology support WAI-ARIA, and not to others.
Typically there are a number of expandable blocks on a page (ranging
from 5 to maybe 100 at most). Therefore, I want to be sure that any
solution (e.g., using text) is not overly verbose.
Possible solution: On some pages that have expandable content there is
a "show all / hide all" switch. That switch appears earlier in
document order than the list of expandable blocks. I was wondering
whether we might make use of that piece of content to let people know
that there's a bunch of expandable content on the page. For example,
would it be sufficient to label the option buttons: "Show all content
under heading level 3s below" and "Hide all content under heading
level 3s below" and not have additional information that they are
expandable?
Thank you for any suggestions,
Ian Jacobs
--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org) http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel: +1 718 260 9447